


Ficlet: Already Knew

by Jacqueline Albright-Beckett (xaandria)



Series: Between The Lines [25]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Confession, Hospital, Injured Dean, M/M, Shipper!Sam, human!Cas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-07
Updated: 2014-11-07
Packaged: 2018-08-29 15:05:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8494582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xaandria/pseuds/Jacqueline%20Albright-Beckett





	

He doesn’t know what to do.

Dean’s breathing - or a machine is breathing for him, one of the two - and he looks so peaceful but it’s all an illusion, a trick of the clear bags and their tubes and the needles. Cas didn’t know how much he hated needles until he saw how many had been involved in settling Dean into this bed.

Sam is there, and Charlie, and Charlie had spent some time holding Cas as tears numbly ran down his face and soaked the shoulder of her shirt and he’d felt that she understood, somehow. Sam stares at Dean on the bed as though unable to believe that it’s real.

There are peaks and valleys and numbers and colors on the screens at the head of Dean’s bed. Cas doesn’t know what they mean. He can name every major vessel, enumerate every muscle in the human body in alphabetical order in seven languages, but this knowledge seems far removed from the almost ritualistic actions the doctors are taking as they stand with their grim faces around Dean’s bed.

And Cas is useless, worse than useless, because there was a time when he could have done something. Mended the contusions, stemmed the slow bleed whose source baffled the doctors, done something. His hands now were good for nothing but stroking the rough stubble of his cheeks.

"I never told him," he says to Sam one morning as they pick at the tasteless hospital food.

"He knew," Sam says, looking up. “I know he did."

"I might never get to tell him now. He might never hear it from me."

Sam takes a long swallow from his orange juice. “Dean’s tough. He’ll pull through."

They’ve been saying that and variations of that for days; any improvement is too small for anyone to tell.

Cas is alone in the room with the hum of the machines and the steady beeps that he’s learned to tune out, and Dean looks so small and shrunken and Cas is overwhelmed by everything he should have said and could have done and wanted to do and he can’t stop himself from leaning over the bed and pressing his lips to Dean’s forehead, knowing the gesture is useless but beyond caring.

A monitor blips. It is a different blip, and it takes a moment before Cas realizes that Dean’s eyelids are fluttering.

This has happened before, as he slowly rises from the enforced sedation the doctors are keeping him under; any second now a nurse will appear and change the IV bag and Dean will drift off to wherever he has been spending his time.

And there she is, the night nurse, the one called Felicity who has brought Cas coffee. She gives him a sad smile and goes to change the IV bag.

But Cas’s eyes are drawn to a slow twitch in Dean’s hand that lays on the outside of the covers. The fingers spasm, then curl in on themselves, and…

The room blurs, and Cas wipes his eyes. Dean’s unmistakable thumbs-up relaxes as the sedative washes over him again.

Cas would be able to tell him. Even if he already knew.


End file.
